


Tonight You're a Stranger (Some Silhouette)

by Silent-Wordsmith (Shatteredsand)



Series: Don't Dream Too Deep [4]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst, Biting, Bruising, Coming Untouched, Denial, Dirty Walk, Dubious Consent, Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, Fingerfucking, Guilt, Hello Children It's Time to SIN, Marking, More Guilt, Morning After, Multiple Orgasms, Oral Sex, Praise Kink, Pseudo-Incest, Public Sex, Repression, Rough Sex, Self-Loathing, Service Top!Kara, Sister-Sister Incest, Suicidal Thoughts, This Shit Got Real Dark Real Fast, Wall Sex, You Thought the Last Three Were Angsty??, dom/sub dynamics, hints of exhibitionism, it's not incest if one of them is an alien, red k!kara, think again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-01
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-11-07 18:10:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11064399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shatteredsand/pseuds/Silent-Wordsmith
Summary: Kara isn’t quite acting like Kara. Alex knows her sister, better than she probably should, and this isn’t Kara. But it sounds like Kara, mostly, and it feels like Kara, entirely, and maybe it’s okay. Maybe they can have this.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> AN: Are you ready for some delicious (and deliciously painful) Red!K Kara in this verse? Because I am. I’ve been hyped to write this fic since before I even finished “Close Your Eyes”. This is exactly one chapter of filthy smut and one chapter agonizing angst. So, ya know, have fun with that.

 

Alex bites back a smile of pride when Kara calls her and says she’s outshone the Other Assistant to win a couple of tickets to some swanky dance club. And when Kara invites her for a sister’s night out instead of in, Alex can’t find it in herself to refuse. Not when Kara sounds so happy.

There are a litany of bad memories Alex associates with clubs—too much to drink,  not enough sense to not go to bed with random strangers who had felt _good_ but hadn’t felt _right_ —but this is a celebration. This is _Kara’s_ celebration. And gods help her if Alex ever thought she could take that away from her foster sister.

The music is loud, but not unnecessarily so, and the crowd around them is dancing like there are no lines to mind. Alex is dancing, she’s dancing like she used to not so very long ago. And Kara—in a tight fitting black dress that highlights all of her curves and doesn’t hide the ever present cut of her biceps—is dancing like she _wants_ to be noticed, wants eyes on her for the first time since she came to Earth and everyone else had told her she had hide.

It’s gorgeous, in the worst way. And Alex finds herself looking, in the worst way. And Alex finds herself _wanting_ , in the worst way.

Alex has put those feelings behind her. Alex has moved past these echoes of attraction. Alex has made herself forget about how it felt to hear Kara moan her name in the heat of the moment. Alex has forgotten the way her body had shaken, had come undone, the way she’d screamed out Kara’s name as she came.

College was years ago, and Alex tells herself she hasn’t been tempted since then. More than she tells herself that she can hold herself back to two, maybe three, drinks of ever familiar whiskey. More than she tells herself that a couple of glasses of wine can be enough to take the edge off without ending up back where she was when Hank—J’onn—had fished her out of the drunk tank and given her a reason to keep living that wasn’t just unearthly blue eyes and sunshine blonde hair and the crushing inability to meet expectations.

Nothing Alex has ever done has ever been good enough. But she’s been good enough at forgetting and moving on, she tells herself. She’s good enough at being a big sister to someone she can’t see as a sister at all. She’s always been good for _Kara_.

So they dance.

It’s not sexual. It _isn’t_. This is two single ladies on a night out. This is two girls dancing together for fun. Hell, maybe they’ll find a couple of potential dates in this place. This isn’t sexual.

At first.

But Kara keeps coming in closer, closer, closer. And Alex keeps letting her because she doesn’t know how to keep her away, doesn’t even want to keep her away.

She’s weak. She’s always been weak. Kara has always _made_ her weak.

This dance lacks the innocence of those that came before. No respect distance between them. Nothing but the pulsing beat in her ears, thrumming through her body, and Kara’s arms draped over her shoulders and the seductive sway of her foster sister’s hips against hers. Nothing but Kara’s breath ghosting against Alex’s neck. Nothing but Alex’s hands clutching almost desperately at Kara’s waist, slipping down to hold her hips.

This is treading dangerously close to a line Alex hasn’t let herself cross since a desperate call from her sister when they were both still teenagers, when Alex had given instructions that Kara had diligently followed until they were both shaking and quivering and _coming_ , crying out each other’s names.

 _This_ is too close to _that_.

Alex should step away, get another drink—she’s only had two; a third won’t hurt anything or anyone—put some distance between her and temptation. But Kara’s arms are locked behind her head, glorious alien strength keeping Alex in place even if she thought she could pull away. Not that Alex thinks enough of herself to think that she could actually bring herself to try it.

“Kara…” She says, instead. Gasps, really, against the shell of Kara’s ear. A plea. For more, for less, Alex isn’t sure. A plea for something.

“ _Alex_.” Kara sighs back, sounding so much like the phone call Alex has desperately been trying to forget—the phone call that has haunted her for years, despite her best efforts—and Alex has to bite her lip to stop a vocal reaction to that. Nothing she can do can stop the physical one, the sudden flood of wetness soaking into her panties.

She has half the presence of mind to wonder where James is, why Kara is here with her instead of him. Kara likes him, Kara _wants_ him. She could be dirty dancing with her hot new coworker instead of Alex, but here they are. It sends a painfully warm feeling through her whole body, realizing that Kara had wanted this with her instead of him.

It’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s _wrong_.

Then Kara’s lips are brushing over the skin of Alex’s neck, nothing innocent in the gesture. Alex gasps, Alex tightens her hands on Kara’s hips, and Alex tilts her head to give her more room to work.

One of Kara’s hands slips from around her shoulders to trail down between her breasts, the other curling almost possessively, keeping Alex locked in her grasp. And down, further, past her bellybutton, and down, to the hem of Alex’s dress, fingertips feverish for a human but perfectly normal for a Kryptonian feather-light on the skin of Alex’s thighs.

Alex hasn’t been this wet in her entire life.

“Kara.” Alex doesn’t know what she wants to say after that. Her words are caught in her throat, caught somewhere between _please_ and _what_ _are_ _you_ _doing_. Caught somewhere between _we can’t do this_ and _don’t stop_.

“It’s okay, Alex.” Kara says against the now wet skin, moving up to suck an earlobe into her mouth. Alex groans. “It’s _okay_.”

Alex can’t let herself believe that, but as Kara’s hand shifts again, nails raking up and under the hem of her dress, sure to leave glorious red marks in the morning, she also can’t begin to stop it.

Kara’s fingers play against her inner thigh, occasionally feathering at the edge of her ruined underwear, and Alex cannot even breathe. She’s wanted this for so long, too long, inappropriately long. And this is still the height of _wrong_ , but, gods help her, she can’t even think of trying to make Kara stop.

Fingers slide further up, pushing aside her panties like it’s nothing, flutter through drenched folds, exploring. Alex gasps, groans, bites her lip to keep any other sounds behind her teeth. They’re in public. And they’re supposed to be sisters. And this is _wrong_.

Alex’s hips buck without permission from her brain.

“That’s it, Alex. Let me feel you.” Kara’s words land hotly against Alex’s ear and she trembles at the feeling. This is everything she’s wanted since she was sixteen. Kara, touching her intimately. Kara, holding her close while she shudders with pleasure.  Kara, pressed against her and touching her and _wanting_ her. Just, _Kara_.

Alex never thought she’d ever see this outside of the pathetic imaginings behind her own closed eyelids and burning fever dreams.

Kara’s fingers glide up again, circle around her clit, and Alex is biting her lip hard enough to hurt, to bleed, to stop from moaning loud enough to be heard over the music of the club and drawing unwanted eyes on them.

“Good girl.” Kara coos, and Alex pulses like Kara had done something more than speak. “Yeah, that’s it, that’s it. Rao, you’re so wet for me, Alex. So wet at having me touch you like this where anyone could see.”

The words should be a slap in the face, a reminder. Alex should take them at their value and demand that they stop, that at least they leave, go to one apartment or another. This is lewd, and this is _wrong_ , and they shouldn’t be doing this here. They shouldn’t be doing this at all.

But all Alex can do is bite her lip harder, taste the burst of copper on her tongue—a familiar taste since she started going on missions for the DEO—and grind harder against Kara’s hand.

“You like it, don’t you, Alex?” Kara says sweetly against her ear, fingers never stopping in their ministrations. “You like knowing that everyone can see how much you’re mine; how much I’m _yours_.”

Alex’s orgasm takes her by surprise—she hadn’t thought she was that close—but she muffles a scream of Kara’s name against her shoulder, teeth sinking into flesh that has just enough give not to break her jaw.

“Shh, it’s okay. You’re okay.” Kara reassures, holding the entirety of Alex’s weight in her arms while Alex shudders and quivers and quakes and _comes_. Gods, she’s never come like this before. Never this hard, never for this long. Never like _this_.

“ _Kara_.” Alex breathes, gasps, moans. She doesn’t know what just happened, but it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to her.

Kara’s fingers don’t stop, don’t even slow, and Alex finds herself biting back down in a few breaths, coming again before she thought she was even done from the first.

Alex is limp against Kara when the hand finally slip out from her dress, to more fully hold her—though they both know Kara could hold Alex up with a single finger without even feeling it—and then Kara is kissing her. Kara is kissing her, on the lips. Not like a sister. Not like a friend. Not like she ever has. Not like she _should_.

Kara, kissing her like a lover who _wants_.

Alex is panting desperately when Kara releases her mouth to press biting kissing to her throat and collarbones, hard enough that Alex is sure there’ll be marks there that Alex’ll have to come up with excuses for in the light of the morning. Marks that Alex knows that she’ll touch, press into, re-bruise with the force of her own fingers as she masturbates remembering this moment.

“Come with me?” Kara asks, as if Alex has ever had any chance of telling her no. Alex has never been able to deny her foster sister anything, least of all this, something that Alex has wanted for over a decade and never thought she’d actually have.

“Of, of course.” Alex manages to say, following when Kara grabs her hand and starts leading her out of the club.

OooO

The door isn’t even closed behind them when Kara is on her. She grasps Alex by the back of her thighs, slides her hands up to cup her ass, and hauls Alex up against her. It’s too much force to be human, Alex can already feel the bruises beginning to form on her thighs, her ass. It makes her moan, makes her gasp for air, makes her _so_ _damn_ **_wet_**.

 Alex has no choice but to wrap her thighs around Kara’s hips as Kara slams her against the door, closing it with the force of the collision. Alex moans, loud and uninhibited, no longer concerned with the thought that someone could see them, hear them. Her neighbors had heard her moan and scream for Kara for months before now, long before Alex had brought Kara home after all, no matter how she tried to think of anyone else as she touched herself.

Kara is unperturbed by the fact that they’re just barely inside Alex’s apartment, more interested in getting her hands under Alex’s dress again. And Alex is going to let her, again.

Kara lacks the hesitancy, the carefulness, from the club. They’re in private now, and Alex can feel her alien foster sister drop the pretense of giving a damn for an audience they no longer have. Her hands slides straight up, no fucking around, to drive two fingers into Alex’s aching cunt.

“Kara!” Alex moans, nearly _screams_ , as Kara sets a brutal pace. Pounding into her like she’ll find something lost in the depths of Alex. And Alex is helpless in the alien’s grasp, rendered incapable of anything other than sighs and gasps and moans and near screams. Rendered to nothing more than pleading gasps, begging words, to “Please, Kara, gods, please. Kara!” as her foster sister drives her closer, closer, closer to climax for the third time that night.

“What do you want, Alex? I just want to give you what you want.” Kara growls, and Alex has never heard her like this before. It makes her wetter, needier, brings her closer to the edge she’d already been hovering at. “What you _need_. Tell me, Alex. Let me give you what you need.”

Alex gasps, Alex moans, and Alex comes for the third time that night under Kara’s touch.

“You!” Alex screams in the midst of orgasm. “I just want, need, _you_! Kara, Kara, Kara, _Kara_!” Alex can’t stop her jerking hips, her shuddering breaths, her desperate _need_. She has wanted Kara for so long, told herself that she couldn’t have this for just as long, but now Kara is with her, inside her, sending her incoherent and desperate with her touch. And Alex cannot think about anything but _this_.

“Good girl, Alex.” Kara coaxes when Alex has finally stopped coming, when her cunt has stopped clenching at Kara’s fingers. When Alex is nearly coherent, but not nearly coherent enough to stop this from going any further.

Alex is nearly back at the edge, just at the realization that Kara is still inside of her, that Kara _wants_ to be inside her, that this well and truly _happening_.

“That’s good. Come all over my hand. I know you want to, you’ve always wanted to. Since we were kids.”

Alex flushes, Alex bites her lip, Alex tries to pretend that Kara isn’t ousting her most closely held secret with casual nonchalance. And Alex, Alex does what Kara tells her to. Alex comes all over Kara’s hand, again. She’s coming so hard. She cannot stop her jerking hips, cannot stop the complete feeling of bliss overtaking her, cannot stop the overwhelming feeling of pleasure and completeness that having Kara inside of her brings out in her.

This is still everything she’s ever wanted from Kara.

The closeness, the intimacy, the sensuality, the sexuality of it.

 “God, Kara.” Alex gasps out, panting against Kara’s neck, before latching her lips against the so soft kin there. Kara shudders, Kara whimpers, and Alex wants more of that. “Let me touch you. Please.”

Kara nods, silent and shaking, tugging Alex’s hand down the hem of her dress. “ _Please_ , Alex.”

Alex doesn’t hesitate. She’s thought, dreamed, touched herself to the idea, of this too often to let herself hesitate. If Kara wants her, Alex isn’t going to pretend that she doesn’t want her back. She won’t let the opportunity pass her by just because everyone else says she should.

She’s lived her entire life according to other people’s expectations, and it’s only made her miserable. She won’t let this chance go if Kara wants it as much as she does. And the wetness that meets her fingers as Kara presses her hand insistently against her core tells Alex that Kara _does_ want this. Just as much as Alex has since she was a teenager.

Who the fuck is she to deny both of them something they so obviously want? It’s not like Kara couldn’t stop Alex if it became too much, if she didn’t want this. Kara isn’t a lost child anymore; she’s grown, now, grown on Earth. Kara knows what she’s doing, what she’s asking for.

Kara could stop her in the blink of an eye. Kara could shove Alex away with enough force to break bone without a thought. Kara could jerk out of Alex’s reach and be halfway to Hong Kong before Alex realized she’d gone. Alex isn’t doing anything Kara doesn’t want, couldn’t do anything Kara doesn’t want.

Kara _wants_ this.

Alex falls to her knees, Kara’s hand knotting forcefully in her short hair and tugging her towards the wetness Alex is so damn eager to taste, exactly where her foster sister wants—needs—her.  Kara isn’t wearing any underwear. Her arousal runs in rivulets down her thighs, and Alex trembles knowing that Kara has been like that the whole night, leaking down her thighs with want for Alex. That Kara had deliberately not worn panties in the expectation, the _hope_ , that this would happen.

Alex follows directions, even nonverbal ones, flawlessly. She drags her tongue through wet folds, hands firm against Kara’s ass as she begins to feast on the succulent flesh presented to her. Kara’s fistful of hair a firm command Alex is eager to obey.

Gods, Kara is _wet_. Alex licks and sucks, desperate for every trace of her foster sister’s arousal that she can capture with her tongue and lips. Kara groans, grunts, moans, hands insistent in Alex’s hair, against Alex’s head, driving her closer, more forcefully, deeper into her cunt. And Alex is fervent to comply, to give Kara everything she wants, everything Alex can give her, everything Alex has spent more than a decade telling herself she _couldn’t_ give her.

“This is what you _wanted_ , isn’t it?” Kara’s voice is low and rough and ragged, her breathing jagged. _Alex_ did that. Alex did that to _Kara_. “This is what you’ve _always_ wanted. To be on your knees for me.”

Alex moans into her, because. Yes, yes, this is what she wanted. This is what she _wants_.

A hundred thousand dreams across the years, all of them starting like this and ending with Alex bolting awake at the cusp of her own release having dreamt Kara’s only moments before. But this is real. Kara has never been so wet in her fantasies, her dreams. Kara has never moaned like this, low in her throat, when Alex had imagined going down on the alien. Kara’s hands had always been soft and gentle and careful in her imaginings, not rough, never so firm, so unrelenting.

This is better than any fantasy, any dream.

This is _real_.

Alex wonders, feeling Kara starting to clench up around her questing tongue, as she probes with hungry delight at the soft spongey feel of her g-spot—larger than a human’s, more sensitive than a human’s—if she could come just from getting Kara off.

“That’s it, Alex. _Good_ girl. You’re fucking me _just_ _right_. Right there, Alex, _right there_. You’re doing so good. _Alex_!”

Kara comes, the flavor of her coating Alex’s tongue, her lips, her chin, and Alex find that, yes. Yes, she absolutely can come just from giving her foster sister an orgasm. Even without being touched. Alex whimpers against Kara’s clit, unwilling to withdraw her tongue until she’s sure that Kara is finished with it.

Before Alex has recovered from her unexpected orgasm, Kara has her in her arms again. Alex blinks with unfocused eyes, and they’re in her bedroom. She blinks again and her pretty dress is in tatters at the foot of the bed, Kara’s black dress of seduction in a similar state next to it.

“We’re not done.” Kara breathes in Alex’s ear before crashing their lips together again. “Not even close.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who’s ready for pain? For the True Agony? For absolute devastation and despair of endless depths? Mind the tags and READ IN A SAFE MINDSET, GUYS.

For a second, for a single moment of blinding relief and crushing disappointment, she thinks last night was a dream. Until she cracks her eyes open in the watercolor weak dawn light and her body aches in familiar ways it hasn’t in years and unfamiliar ways that reminds her that she fucked an _alien_ last night.

She fucked _Kara_ last night.

Her eyes slam back closed, trying to remember what, exactly, she’d done last night.

Alex’s breath hitches at the flashes of memory—slow in coming, at first, but then a sudden deluge of images that she knows she’ll never forget no matter how hard she tries—and, oh, gods. Oh, gods, what had she been thinking? What had _Kara_ been thinking?

How could she have allowed this to happen? She should have stopped it. There, on the dancefloor, here in her apartment. It was wrong, it was perverse, it was her baby sister fucking her brains out until she begged for her to stop and then blew past that point and begged her to never ever not be touching her.

_Jesus fucking Christ and all his damned disciples._

She’d known she was sick, had felt the attraction and affection slip in and _twist_ , but she’d always been so careful. So damn careful to mind the lines, the boundaries, to keep herself where Kara needed her, not where Alex wanted them. But she’d slipped, she’d fallen, she’d done the unthinkable and the unforgivable and. And she’d had sex with Kara last night. She’d had a _lot_ of sex with Kara last night.

Fuck.

Kara isn’t in bed with her, she knows that much. Kryptonians burn so much hotter than humans. Alex would know immediately—intimately, from years of Kara crawling into her bed for comfort from nightmares, from sudden noises too loud for her superhearing to ignore, from the screams for help that Kara had been trained to let wash over her without rushing to save the day—if Kara was with her.

Maybe this is good. Maybe Kara has realized that what they’d done last night was an abomination, was a perversion of the sisterly bond they were supposed to share. Maybe Kara had slipped out in the night after Alex had collapsed into a blissed out—passed out?—boneless puddle of post-orgasmic goo. Maybe they can pretend it didn’t happen.

Maybe there’s something of their relationship as it should be that can still be salvaged.

And then her phone rings. And then J’onn is telling her about a radiation signature that’s almost like kryptonite but isn’t quite. And then she’s hearing the name Maxwell Lord and the word experimentation. And then Kara is coming back into the room, naked as the day she was—not born, Kryptonians aren’t born, they’re _made_ —as she came out of the birthing matrix, two cups of coffee in her hands, and Alex’s breath catches in her throat.

Alex knows she can hear her racing heart, can hear what J’onn is telling her. Alex can see her sultry swagger lose momentum only to be overcome by something like rage. Something _like_ rage, Alex thinks, because Kara has been so very careful not to get _angry_ since she came to Earth. Her wrath is dangerous in a way few humans’ can be and she knows that, cares about that, makes a concentrated effort to tape it down until she’s in an isolated place with nothing but ruins to wreck or enclosed in a green room where she can vent as safely as any other non-superpowered being on this good green Earth.

She is a blur of motion and, faster than Alex’s all too human eyes can track, she has Alex’s cell crushed to dust in her hand.

“Don’t listen to him, Alex.” She says, half pleading and half demanding. “This is what we’ve always wanted. Don’t let them take it away again.”

Alex closes her eyes, fights against the tears she can feel welling behind her eyelids, breathes in and out in shuddering breaths that do nothing to quell the sense of suffocation pressing down on her lungs.

It wasn’t Kara. Not really. She was, essentially, _drugged_. Her foster sister was drugged, and Alex took advantage of that. Kara had been drugged by an unknown substance with unknown properties, and rather than being concerned about her uncharacteristic behavior, Alex had let her fuck her brains out because that’s what _Alex_ wanted.

Oh.

Oh, gods.

She’s going to be sick.

Alex bolts from the bed, hand clapped over her mouth, horrified at herself. Disgust with herself. Hating herself more than she ever has, in a way that she likely never will again because this loathing will _stay_. This loathing will linger beyond the moment after release, beyond the split-second after a daydream. This loathing will become a part of her that she will never be rid of.

Her sister had been influenced by an unknown intoxicant. And Alex had taken that altered state of mind as consent, as permission.

Her baby sister had been drugged.

And Alex had all but _raped_ her.

When Alex throws up, it doesn’t make her feel any better.

OooO

Kara doesn’t leave it be, doesn’t recoil from her like she should. Of course she doesn’t; she’s still fucking drugged.

“Alex. Alex, listen to me.” The alien tries to cup Alex’s cheek and the idea of touching her—if letting herself be touched—is too awful for words after what she’s done.

“Don’t touch me!”

“That’s not what you said last night.” Kara huffs, rolling her eyes with something like affection.

Alex throws up again.

“Stop that. Alex, last night was great, _perfect_! We can just—”

“They’re going to cure you.” Alex says, one part blind, optimistic hope and one part selfish, sick despair.

“I won’t let them.” Kara sounds resolute and firm and untouchable. She sounds like _Supergirl_. She doesn’t sound like a twenty-five year old woman who had been drugged and used by her own damn sister. “They can’t take this; it’s _ours_.”

It isn’t.

It’s Alex’s. Alex’s twisted lust. Alex’s warped love. Alex wanting and wanting and wanting, and Kara _knowing_. Kara, drugged on some kind of synthetic kryptonite, giving Alex exactly what she wanted. Because Alex wanted it, not because Kara did.

“They’re going to cure you.” Alex says again, refusing to look at this person who she’d hurt so badly. She can’t stomach looking at her. Looking into those alien blue eyes, so damn trusting, and knowing what she’s done. She can’t.

She can’t do any of this.

“No.” Kara says, standing abruptly. “They won’t. And then you’ll see. I’ll make you see, Alex. We’re going to be _so_ _perfect_.”

Then Kara is gone in a rush of air, and Alex throws up again.

OooO

Alex isn’t on the op that brings Supergirl in.

There’s a fight in the middle of the city. Supergirl in her cape and crest under attack by military jackboots. Kryptonite weapons. Humans breaking like toys under superhuman strength. She starts screaming during the fight, and that makes it worse. For everyone.

“I won’t let you take her from me! She’s _mine_!”

Over and over again, until those are the last words National City’s hero says before she’s taken away.

There’s outrage, from the public. Supergirl hadn’t done anything, publicly, to deserve being shot full of green kryptonite, cuffed with green kryptonite, carted away in a black van with no markings and no license plate and chock _full_ of green kryptonite by men and women of unquestionably military personnel. Rumors abound about this mysterious woman Supergirl had been fighting for, had been taken for, what it meant to be claimed by a superhero.

Catco is quick to air a report, to print articles, to make this atrocity known. Alex watches them, after. Alex reads them, after.

She has to, because Alex isn’t on the op that brings Supergirl in. Alex cannot bring herself to look at the sister she had so betrayed, because Alex cannot bring herself to leave her own bathroom, even.

She’s a _monster_ , worse than any alien held by the DEO. She wonders if J’onn will arrest and court-martial her if she tells him what she’s done. If he’d be willing to forgo the formalities—spare her the shame and disgrace, if she begged—and simply shoot her in a friendly-fire _accident_ on her next mission. Wonders if it would be cruel to ask it of him, this Martian who looks at her like a daughter. Wonders if she could be responsible for letting— _making_ —him lose another being that he loved.

Wonders if it would be worse to stay alive and have him look at her, knowing what she’d done.

OooO

J’onn storms her apartment with a full TAC team, a dozen men and women in black body armor and heavy assault rifles. They kick her door in, and Alex can hear the hiss and bang of smoke bombs and tear gas. She thinks they’re there to arrest her, or kill her, and she welcomes it.

When J’onn finally descends on her, she’s crouched over the toilet, still periodically gagging and spewing bile with nothing left in her stomach to properly throw up.

“Clear!” J’onn calls back, and Alex nearly cries when she sees him drop his rifle down to his side. “Agent Danvers, _Alex_ , are you okay?”

Is she? Has she ever been? Not for years, she knows that much. It’s not _okay_ to lust after your foster sister. It’s not _okay_ to dream of her, to fantasize about her, to touch yourself while thinking of her. Nothing Alex has done in the past twelve years has been _okay_.

Everything she’s done in the past twelve hours has been nothing short of _horrific_.

And J’onn, mind-reader that he is, goes so still at his intrusion into her mind. Goes so still, seeing what Alex had let happen. What Alex wanted to happen. What Alex had done.

“Supergirl is in DEO custody. Lord synthesized an antidote.”

Alex nods weakly, wondering when he’s going to bring out his cuffs. When he’s going to frog-march her out of the room, the apartment, the building. When she’s going to made to answer for her crime.

“She asked for you. Before we sedated her.” He pauses, likely slipping into her thoughts again. “Before and after the cure. She wants to see you, Alex.”

Well.

Who is she to deny her victim closure?

OooO

Kara is in her super-suit, lying prone on her sunbed, an arm tossed over her eyes. Alex wonders what she’d see in those too blue eyes. Horror? Revulsion? Hatred? Alex swallows thickly and trains her gaze on the floor; she doesn’t want to know.

“Kara.” It takes an ungodly amount of willpower to force the word past her lips. Whatever happens now, Alex wants no part of it. She wants to pretend this never happened, wants throw herself on some bomb somewhere far away, wants to be an anonymous corpse in a warzone. She doesn’t want to have to face her shame, just be punished for it swiftly and without mercy.

But she’d requested her transfer before she’d even left her apartment, and J’onn had denied it just as quickly as she’d made it. She’d go over his head, if there was anyone above him to go to, but there isn’t. So here she is, and here she will stay.

She wonders if Eliza would be disappointed if she went home and ate her gun, or if her mother would just be quietly relieved.

Kara sobs at the sound of her voice. It’s a broken sound and whatever is left of Alex shatters to hear it. She did that. She brought the most powerful being on the planet down to _this_ with her careless, reckless selfishness.

“Alex.” Kara croaks. “I’m so sorry.”

Vertigo grips Alex then with sudden ferocity. That’s, that’s not right. Kara has _nothing_ to apologize for, Kara has done nothing _wrong_. Kara is the godsdamned _victim_ here.

Alex wonders how badly she must have fucked Kara up that her first instinct is to apologize to her after Alex was the one who… After Alex had done what she had.

“Kara, no.” Alex makes herself reassure, makes herself soothe. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“Yes, it was.”

Wonders of wonders, Alex is actually capable of hating herself even more than she had this morning.

Abstract thoughts about how other people might feel about it evolves into the actual planning of how to get far enough away that Kara wouldn’t hear the accelerating of her heartbeat, the cocking of the gun. She’s going to have to mentally hum some outrageously annoying and upbeat pop song until she gets past J’onn, too. Or focus really, really hard on the bottle of whiskey she’s going to drink the majority of tonight; that part’s true, too, even if it’s only the prelude, even if it’s only because she doesn’t trust herself to follow through while sober. Survival instinct is human nature, and Alex is so painfully human.

“No, no.” Alex inches closer, eyes darting up to make sure that Kara doesn’t flinch away. She doesn’t. “It’s wasn’t. It wasn’t _you_ , and it _shouldn’t_ have been me, and this is _not your fault_.”

_It’s mine_ , Alex wants to shout, to scream. But, with Kara like this, her foster sister would only end up trying to comfort her. And Alex does not deserve comforting. This needs to be about Kara. Kara deserves this, this closure, a neat bow on the worst thing that has ever happened to her on Earth.

“Did I hurt anyone else?”

“You didn’t hurt anyone, Kara.” Those DEO agents knew what they’d signed up for when they’d been recruited, and it wasn’t _Kara_ who did the hurting. She was drugged; it didn’t count.

“I hurt _you_.”

Not in any way Alex didn’t want her to, but she can’t exactly say that.

“I’m fine.”

Kara shakes her head, mute, biting her lip and squeezing her eyes shut.

“I am. I promise, Kara, I’m _okay_.”

“I didn’t mean it.” Kara hadn’t managed to look at Alex since she’d come in, but she manages eye contact now. For a second. “What I said. I didn’t mean it.”

Alex blinks back the tears beginning to build behind her eyes. This is not new information. She’d always known, she’d always known, Kara doesn’t feel that way about her. Kara is good and pure and much better than this world deserves. And Kara loves her like a little sister is supposed to. What happened last night was an aberration, a moment of blind blasphemy against that sacred bond. Alex knows that, Alex has known that since J’onn’s call. Hell, she’d known that from the very moment she’d woken up this morning.

Kara loves her; Kara is not in love with her.

“I know. It’s okay. I’m okay.”

“Are we okay?” So soft as to be barely audible.

Alex stills her trembling hands, stops picturing her gun, stops imagining the taste of cold metal against her tongue. Alex breathes in deep, remembers how much she likes whiskey, remembers how deep into the bottle she can crawl before throwing up. Alex takes a deep breath, and Alex lies.

“Of course we are.”

OooO

“Agent Graham, Agent Grey, please detain Agent Danvers.” J’onn barks the moment Alex steps out of Kara’s sunroom and back in the command hub. Well. So much for at least being allowed the dignity to shoot her own damn self without all the mess and fuss of a court-martial.

Fuck, this isn’t even a death penalty offense. She’s going to have to try and find some way to kill herself in a military prison. If they send her to a military prison. They could hold her here; if they hold her here, she has no chance of getting her hands on anything she could use for her own end. The DEO is too good to make that kind of mistake.

“Sir?” Graham says, question heavy in his tone, even as his body moves to obey. Good man, Graham. He’d joined the DEO right after Alex, has served beside and under her for years. He’d been the second to snap into a crisp salute when Alex’s name had appeared under the title of acting director, just a fraction of a second after Vasquez.

“Sir.” Grey is older, already an agent by the time Alex had started her training. He doesn’t question; he follows orders.

The hub is silent and still. Alex is pretty sure that half of them have stopped breathing.

J’onn personally removes her sidearm. “Escort Agent Danvers to Interrogation One. Graham, on the door; Grey, in the room. At no point in time should you hand Agent Danvers anything nor step within arm’s or leg’s reach of her. Understood?”

“Sir!” Twin barks of deference, one still tinged with the taste of confusion.

OooO

J’onn doesn’t keep her waiting for long. Shortly after Graham and Grey escort her into the room, J’onn is swooping in. Grey darts out at J’onn’s nod of dismissal, and then it’s just the two of them. Just Alex and the man who she loves like a father, and both them knowing exactly what kind of monster she is and what kind of atrocities she’s capable of.

“You, Agent Danvers,” He starts, and Alex braces for the list of charges. Conduct unbecoming, rape, dereliction of duty. “Are not allowed to die.”

That, Alex hadn’t been expecting.

“Sir?” Playing dumb with a mindreader isn’t the smartest choice, but it’s pretty much the only one she has right now. She knows that he knows, had seen the knowledge in his eyes when he’d looked at her in her bathroom, but she’ll admit to nothing. Not out loud. She can barely face the shame of it inside her own head, knowing it’s inside J’onn’s, she won’t breath further life into it by saying the words.

“You are not allowed to _die_.” J’onn repeats, with emphasis. “Kara needs you, the DEO needs you, this whole planet needs you. You are not _allowed_ to die.”

Maybe it’s true, and maybe it isn’t, but it’s not going to convince Alex that more than anything, what Kara, the DEO, and the world need most is for her to not be living in it. Not after what she’s done.

“You’re on Section Eight Administrative leave until Dr. Heller clears you. You will not be given back your badge or gun until he does so. You will not be released from the med bay until he does so. You will not be left without escort until he says so. And you will not die until _I_ say so. Are we clear?”

Alex hates it. Alex wants to jump the table, grab J’onn’s gun, and finish it already. But she’s not fast or strong enough to get it from him, and she knows it. And she hates herself, hates how she feels and what she’s done with those feelings, but she won’t kill herself in the middle of the DEO. Not in front of her coworkers and the closest things she has to friends. She won’t have whoever is ordered to guard her feeling guilty because she used their gun to do the deed.

So she’ll go to therapy, if that’s what J’onn is ordering. And she won’t kill herself, because that’s what J’onn is ordering. And she’ll get back her gun and her badge and she’ll keep working at the DEO for his sake.

And maybe she’ll go home one day in a month, or a year, or a decade. Maybe she’ll go home one day after bearing the pain and the shame and the guilt of what she’s done, and she’ll feel like she’s done enough, worked hard enough, saved enough, that she doesn’t have to punish herself by not being dead.

Maybe she’ll go home one day in a month, or a year, or a decade, when Kara and the DEO and the world don’t need her anymore and she’ll eat her damn gun because she’s _earned_ that.

She’s earned it.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not completely happy with how this turned out, to be honest, but after rewriting it about seven times I decided this was the best it was going to get right now.


End file.
